Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Outcast Orange]

Yeah, I'm trying to keep the item management simplistic, and leave out all the clutter.
You're already going to have to deal with the ground tiles.
Also, being a 3D environment, I'm not sure the items would match the rest of the graphical look.
When I get textures in, that might change my mind though.

I'm starting the new map generation now,
 and I think I'll break it up further like this:

- Surface Map Generation
- Procedural Tile Fill

There are only minor design decisions to be made over these,
 so the new map generation may be done today.

[Jack_Bread]

Sounds great. I'm definitely getting that version when you release it!

[Outcast Orange]

Alfie has helped a lot with design decisions,
and has also helped write some of the code,
so he is now officially a contributor to the completion and future development of this project.
Basically, we are working on this together, to some significant degree.

Also, he knows a lot about the direction of this thing, and can help answer questions on the thread.


Anyways, we've decided how the gen will work,
and I'm going to type it up now.
Let's just say,
that it is going to be hard to reach the edges of the generated map in the future.

I'm going to add that in, and probably upload the game at that point.
The systems won't be completely worked in yet, so you will probably be able to find the edge of the map,
and jump off of it.
Maybe.

We've cut away enough of the details, that I can start to understand the future state of the game.
It will be much easier deciding things from now on,
and only difficult when it technically effects the games processes.

[Outcast Orange]

Okay, it seems everything is working out as it should be.
Surface generation is finished.

I've even got a primitive form of land fill working.
Give me an hour, and I should have this thing working again,
 with all the previous features intact.

The differences will be minimal,
 but the framework is now set for much more exciting future additions.

EDIT:

I finished the code for land fill,
 so now the game can take any location, anywhere,
 and turn it into pretty good land, almost instantly.
Even if it's underground.

I'm going out now, but I'll be back in four hours.
Also, I'm taking my laptop with me, so that I may continue to program.

I'm fairly excited about how things are working,
 and if I can get the next step finished,
 then the local maps may not have boundaries anymore.

Anybody looking forward to exploring the universe on foot?
I know I am.

At that point, I will probably add back in the extra features,
 which you guys know very little about,
 and have you all run around searching them out.

Look forward to more craziness this weekend!

[timmeh]

Sounds awesome!  Looking forward to being able to wander a lot.  Out of curiosity, does this work along side the saving thing, so I could theoretically make a massive underground maze that took up an entire land plate? (Or slightly more realistically, have a large underground home dug out that crosses several zoomed-out tiles)

This is going to be fun!

Now that I think about it, sound like you'll have the first two items on your "grocery list" done soon... does this mean sky HFS could be in the very near future (within a week or so)?  The progress you've made here is seriously impressive!

[Outcast Orange]

I might start on that sort of thing tomorrow.

I expect a lot more to be done this week and next week,
 since it's finals week and I will be free for 80% of it.
Sort of like a vacation week, followed by 2 whole weeks of no school.
Imagine how the game will be after that.

Yes, The First item of the grocery list is done,
 now I am working on the second one.
There will be some headaches,
 and at some point I will have to finalize my save/load system,
 but I think I can finish it today.

[Outcast Orange]

I've been working all day, and I think I'm around half way done with continuous maps.

There will be slight lag when approaching the edges of the maps,
 so about every 200 units of pre-explored land, you will be paused for a whole second.

The land you haven't explored yet will be generated in a completely other way,
which tiles in with the Secret Project at the end of the list.

EDIT:

Here's a screen of the current map generator results:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

That black height map takes around 10 seconds to complete,
 and each of those three squares of "actual map" took less than a second to generate.

This is the way map generation will work under the hood from now on.
I'm thinking of making those default tiles white, just for contrast and coolness.

EDIT:

Just in case anyone wanted to see,
 here's the default map if it survives into the final process:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

So if you ever find map like that, you know it's broken.

[timmeh]

That looks great, the hills are amazing!  It flows a lot better than the old ones, looks really smooth.

Out of curiosity, how does it work?

[Outcast Orange]

How does it work? An average of course!

It starts out as flat blocks, like this:
(Image to be provided later)

Then an average is applied, which tries to make each tile match the height of the surrounding tiles,
resulting in the edges bending into rounded slopes:
(Image to be provided later)

At this point, I use a function I call "foil punch",
which fills the surface full of 1x1 holes, 10 units deep.
(Image to be provided later)

Then, the average curve hits it some more,
 pulling down the land around these holes, to try and equalize it.
At some point during this last step, the edges of these pits start overlapping,
and a lot of them grow into each other.

Once again, here is the final result:
(Image to be provided later)

Sorry, I'll add the images in the morning.
Actually, this was Armok's idea, as can be seen in his first reply.
I think it's the second post in this thread.

[jarathor]

Awesome, it's great to see so much progress.
Here's hoping the rest of this release's coding goes smoothly.

[Armok]

except my idea was to do it in 3d...

[Outcast Orange]

So much for smoothly. I'm made a lot of progress today,
but there are a bunch of really ugly problems right now.

The maps seem to be generating as you travel,
but the generation is missing places, namely the borders, where there is uncrossable void.
Also, I've decided on a save system.

Here's the ugly news:

It takes 15 MB to save a total map.
It only takes 70 KB to save a nonspecific version.

The best solution I can think of, is to have the "Home" map, where you settle at,
have a tag, and it will be saved in detail, while the rest of the maps explored, will only maintain basic info.
So changes you make on other maps will not be saved.

There is also the option for the player to mark each map they enter as a "home" map,
in which case it will add 15 MB for each one done this way.

So I leave the save file limit up to the player.
If you're only going to be staying in one area, once you find a nice place to settle,
you can expand out to the surrounding tiles, but your save file will be over 100 MB.

Does anyone know how to compress files?
These files are being saved in the smallest possible information type,
but I know that if they could be compressed, like 7z files, they would be much smaller.

Any ideas?

[monkey]

Does anyone know how to compress files?

zlib howto: http://zlib.net/zlib_how.html
easier with lzfx: http://code.google.com/p/lzfx/

[Armok]

Could you just detect what tiles players change, maybe save just 16x16x16 blocks or something? (16 is just an arbitary number, just an example)

[Bricks]

Could you just detect what tiles players change, maybe save just 16x16x16 blocks or something? (16 is just an arbitary number, just an example)

Yeah, I was wondering the same thing.  Seems like it would be pretty easy to flag a modified block.